One of the eggheads

Today, after spending my usual 1 to infinity hours in Dr. Hill's office, I tagged along to an academic lecture on Thomas Aquinas being delivered by a UTM philosophy professor. And boy oh boy did I feel smart. Well, at least, the language Dr. Brown used wasn't way over my head, I followed the Q's in the Q&A session, and my attention span gave out around the same time as the two professors with whom I had come to the lecutre. We all three gave up on listening after being there for an hour and fifteen minutes and instead focused on attaining the refreshments in the back of the room.

All in all, it was a very successful afternoon. I was glad that I lollygagged around after class for long enough to catch the local nerds heading over to the lecture; otherwise, I would have missed out on the opportunity to feel like I could actually someday maybe be these peeps' intellectual equals. In fact, I will officially be on an equal playing field (Sort of, sans PhD and whatever) as these very egg-headed men in just 88 days. But who's counting? Today I told someone that the day after graduation, I will be coming up to the university with a sole purpose of calling every professor by his or her first name and not feeling weird about it. Except maybe Hill and Glass...might still feel weird about them, but at least my family's cool with referring to their family by first name and the two of them as Dr. Lastname.

In other news, my dogs may kill each other before they can ever successfully procreate. Skippy is the most hapless courtier I have ever met...could have something to do with being a chihuahua.

Sleep is taking over my brain, and I apologize if this is incoherent. I didn't want to leave my friends and family hanging, now that I'm reintroducing the regular blog posts.

Another tier of the Animal Kingdom

Or..."He and she, baby, ain't nothing but mammals, so..."

Our girl dog, Lilo, is 9 months old. She's not a girl, not yet a woman.

We love her very much. She can't wait to put her face on our faces as soon as we walk in the door, and she's even learning to walk on a leash (something that is completely unnecessary in our neck of the woods, but someday we could live elsewhere that has more call for leash walking). However, she's beginning to appear particularly desirable to our boy dog, Skippy, who is 6 years old and hasn't had a girlfriend in the two years that we've had him. Needless to say, his appetite for romance is fairly insatiable.

Matthew and I, the concerned parents, are about ready to lock them both out of the house and not let them in until they've sorted out their differences. Lilo is apparently still too young to realize her feminine prowess, so she just stares at Skippy like he has two heads every time he tries to get --ahem-- intimate. Lately it has begun escalating to retaliation; Lilo gets her teeth out and says, (in not as many words) "GET OFF OF ME YOU'RE GROSS AND OLD."

The blossoming relationship is amusing, though a little gross, to watch. It will only be permitted to last until we can get one or both of them to the doggie doctor for a little operation. Then, hopefully, things will settle down a little bit and we can go back to normal.

BugsBugsBugs

It's kind of hard to post this update because it makes me feel like our house must be disgusting, but this morning was straight up swallowed by the events I'm about to describe. It couldn't not be mentioned.

When Matthew and I finally got out of bed (now that the kids are old enough to keep themselves occupied for a few minutes after they wake up, Matthew and I have become the real-life laziest people in the world. For me, this means I sleep ALL THE WAY UNTIL 7:30 AM. So sad. So so sad.) there were

WORMS....

Coming out...

OF THE FLOOR.

We spent the better part of the morning squishing, vacuuming, and cleaning our floor to try and understand where the stupid wormy larvae bug things were coming from. Eventually, they stopped coming from the walls and we forgot about them. I think that was probably a great idea because now we'll be equally surprised and grossed out the -- gulp -- next time things start crawling from inside our walls.

PS. We don't think it's termites. Matthew and his mom are betting on flour bugs. Still gross. Still wriggling out from the inside of my house.

Next morning edit: There were more when I woke up this morning, so apparently our spraying efforts were somewhat fruitless.

Re-establishing our Priorities

After a kind of sad and distracted day yesterday, we wanted to start this morning with a fresh perspective on how important this family is to us. The day began with Lara's gymnastics class, which was enjoyable as usual. Matthew worked at Autozone from 6:45-12:00 this morning, so we waited for him to get home and then hit the road for good ole Martin. In training for his St. Jude marathon in December, each weekend comes with a long-a** run. We his family love to support his running endeavors, but it's a lot easier to do so when there's a fun playground nearby to play on while he runs forever and ever.

After Daddy ran and ran and ran and ran, we drove to the UTM pool for a quick dip to cool off (after all, it was a sweltering 70 degrees out today...). Speaking of which, many thanks to the Hill clan for letting us borrow towels. We weren't feeling very clever as we drove up to the Martin pool, a good 35 minute drive from our house, and realized we were fully prepared for an afternoon of swimming, bar towels. After swimming, pizza. After pizza, passed out kids on the car ride home. It was a simple sequence of a perfect family day out. Today's antics helped me to remember that these guys are half the reason I married Matthew-- Matthew being the other half of the reason-- and that we can, as always, make the best of a difficult situation.

As usual, I thought about a lot of things. Most of them verging on the pessimistic. Most of them are probably best left unpublicized because I can never be sure who reads these posts. 

In other news...

I am the Face of UTM. It's about time! I've been waiting two years for someone to realize I'm, like, super important.

Anger

Today I received some news that made me so angry and that I can't really do anything to improve or change. It's one of those things that really feels like a punch in the gut even though I know the person responsible does not, in fact, have a vendetta against me (well, not that I know of). One of those things where I am furious at someone even though I know they did nothing wrong or even anything with any intention of hurting someone.

But I feel hurt. I feel as if years of my life are going to be spent wishing and waiting for something that comes without even trying to millions of other people. I feel like someone is rubbing my face in the fact that I'm not part of an elite club that actually 85% of the population is supposed to be allowed to join. I feel angry because it's not my fault; in fact, it's specifically the fault of someone else.

The worst part of this is that I know I have no choice but to swallow my anger and move on because it's not my fault, but it's not really anyone else's fault either. It's just life. It's just how things are going to be. And I'm going to get used to life in this tasking new way. And every time I look back on this day, I'll probably feel kind of angry and then tell myself that anger doesn't help anything. Anger just is.

If someone had to ask me what my greatest trial in life is, this might be it. I might have to go with this one. Ask me again in forty years.

Loner in the Library

This is the first time in a year that I've been on Martin's campus after 6:00 PM, and I don't even have anyone to eat dinner with me. I look pretty amazingly cool, sitting by myself in the library eating a chicken salad pita pocket. All the other kids are simply aware of how cool I really am, so they're giving me space and that's why the library is empty. Admittedly, this place is sort of depressing when it's totally cleared out. In a nice way, too, though. Plus, I have a pita pocket, which I think comes in the Rule Book under the section "Instances in Which you Always Win, No Matter What." It goes something like this:

1. Anytime you're eating out of a pita pocket.
2. When you spent your weekend at a petting zoo.
3. When your washing machine doesn't mildew your clothes even after the advisable period for leaving a load in the washer has long since passed.
4. When you're required to audition for a play as part of a class even though you have already told the professor there's no way you have time to participate. Oh, and it also helps if auditions run until 9:00 PM on a school/work night.

Wait a minute, how'd that last part get in there? Well, speaking of play auditions, that's why I'm still here on campus after 6:00 PM, chilling in the library like a loser. I've already had to audition to get into the class (It's Advanced Acting, I needed to prove I am advanced because transfer student), so now I get to do another audition for the same professor for a show that I told him I can't be in due to my schedule with work and the familia. But ya know, whatever. 

#spaceballs

Isn't it pathetic that 9PM seems ludicrous (I could make another Spaceballs reference here but I am refraining by doing some restraining) for me to be out gallivanting around town? I used to stay up like a normal person. Aghhhh. Only 94 more days until commencement! It can't come soon enough!

Going to go read all of the books because what are libraries for?

-Mrs. Mary Mac